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Merle Dixon
Merle Dixon is a survivor of the outbreak and older brother to Daryl Dixon in AMC's The Walking Dead. He makes his debut appearance in "Guts". After displaying racist and aggressive behavior to other survivors, Merle is handcuffed to a pipe on a rooftop in Atlanta by Rick. He is forced to amputate his own hand when Walkers are approaching the roof through a door, since T-Dog had accidentally dropped the key to the handcuffs. Merle cauterized his own wounds and survived. Eventually he was found by a man named Philip Blake, aka The Governor, and is taken to Woodbury. However, after Rick's group attacked the town, Merle was considered a traitor and fled Woodbury with Daryl. Merle served as a minor antagonist in Season 1, later the secondary antagonist for the first half of Season 3, and later one of the main protagonists and an anti-hero for the second half of Season 3. Knowing that Rick's group, except for Daryl, would never accept him as part of the group due to his erratic and volatile personality and past wrongdoings towards the group, Merle decided to self-sacrifice himself to The Governor, but not before killing most of The Governor's men and attempting to kill The Governor himself, in order to give Rick's group, especially his brother Daryl, a fighting chance against The Governor and Woodbury. Overview Appearance and Personality Merle is a tall, Caucasian male with a rugged build. He has short grey hair and commonly is seen with light facial stubble. His amputated hand is later replaced by a metal sleeve with an attachment for a bayonet. A stereotypical rowdy Southern redneck, Merle is extremely ill-tempered, racist, misogynistic,violent, volatile and quick to express his beliefs. Much like his younger brother, Merle is an expert tracker and hunter. He is deadly with firearms, and in the third season, his hand-blade attachment proves to be one of his deadliest weapons. He is an experienced bruiser, showcased in the first season when he dominated T-Dog in a fist-fight, and at the same time was able to fend off Rick, Morales, and Glenn simultaneously. He also shows his fighting abilities when he took down Caesar in the brutal battle-royal event in Woodbury, and was able to fend off Michonne's sword attacks with his hand-blade. Merle was The Governor's right-hand man, all the while striving to find his brother and take vengeance on Rick and T-Dog, who left him for dead on the roof. However, he later comes across Glenn and Maggie and takes them back to Woodbury as prisoners, going as far as to brutally beat Glenn into revealing information about the prison. After the prison group comes to the rescue of Glenn and Maggie, Merle was then branded as a traitor and a terrorist by The Governor, and became an enemy of Woodbury. While he was staying in Woodbury, Merle read many books including the Bible and even memorized verses of the Bible showing that he is intelligent and also possibly religious. He has also claimed that he liked Woodbury's Library and it is one of the few things he missed about Woodbury. While in a heated argument with his younger brother, Daryl, he knocks him down and, in the process, rips his shirt, revealing Daryl's scars, revealing that their father beat and abused them both to a somewhat high degree. After joining the prison group, his personality began to slightly change, appearing to lose some of his violent and racial tendencies. He is even shown to be searching for some forgiveness from those of the group who he had once wronged. He later attempts to fulfill the potential deal made by The Governor and Rick, which was an exchange of Michonne for peace between the two groups. However, he has a change of heart and releases her, instead opting to take on the group of Woodbury soldiers who had been planning an ambush. This would be his biggest and final act of redemption, as after taking down eight Woodbury soldiers, he is killed by The Governor, reanimates and is finally put down by his own brother. To the end of his life, Merle was a flawed man with issues that he kept himself from facing, but was never truly evil, he loved his brother and it drove him to keep fighting in a world filled with despair. His final act of courage gave his brother and the rest of the prison group a fighting chance and perhaps for the first time in his life, Merle truly found his place amongst others. 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